A Parson to India

Mumbai has the most dramatic skyline of any city I've been to. Mumbai has the look of a city that is half-built. Everywhere high-rise buildings are half-formed. Massive brutal concrete structures stand alone awaiting connecting pieces of road and rail. Mumbai has the look of a city half torn-down. From miles out, slums crowd through the city squashed between tower-blocks, beneath flyovers, squeezed into gaps. The bones of towers stick out entombed in fabric or scaffolding awaiting birth or death. Meanwhile the jungle is everywhere. Huge trees soar improbably through the ancient and modern. Lush vines, palm trees, there is a huge stretch of wetlands in the middle of Mumbai, and birds are everywhere. Above the hotel tower where we bathe on the roof, birds of prey soar eyeing the pigeons perched on the side of our pool. If London is a forest, the world’s ninth largest city is a jungle. Cheek by jowl there is obvious poverty, there is great wealth. Huge boards promote affluent lifestyl...

Aravalli Hills outside Udaipur from the Monsoon Palace.  If you want perspective in Scripture, you climb a mountain. Disruption is theological. Disruption is a form of grace. It’s easier to say it the other way around: that grace is a form of disruption. That’s also true. When Paul hears the voice of Jesus to turn from the Church’s persecutor to its chief architect, he is struck blind. Like Samson, he must lose his sight before he can achieve his (less violent) vocation. When Zechariah hears the Word of God he is struck mute. He must lose his voice before he can bear witness to the truth. In St John’s Gospel a man is born blind in order to reveal Christ as the light of the world. The cross is the revelation of strength in weakness, of wisdom in foolishness. The Gospel, drawing on threads throughout Scripture, reveals the kingdom of God only when things are turned upside down. In no way I am speaking here of the experience of disability, of which others are more qualified and on whi...

Visiting temples at Ranthambore Fort in the Jungle Is India a suitable place to bring your children? Partly, that depends on how you felt about growing up when you did (presuming it was before 1990). This is a land untouched by the fearful culture of safeguarding we experience today and by any sense of health and safety. I’ve already spoken of how our boys are the centre of a constant media circus, with continually requests for photographs now strongly rebuffed as Apollo yells at strangers “I hate you!” To be fair it’s an effective way of dealing with unwanted attention. He takes a similar line on the many who try to pinch his chubby little cheeks. The contrast with the current safeguarding climate in the UK is like entering a new world from underwater. I just cannot imagine touching a child that isn’t my own - here a stranger will happily cruise by and swing your child up into their arms - and I wouldn’t even dream of asking if I could take a photograph. There is much to appreciate in...

Deer in Ranthambore National Park Like fish, after three days, guests begin to stink. After three weeks holidays begin to unravel, and become something else.  We are not on holiday. Holidays with young children aren’t holidays anyway. But we knew we were attempting something longer, something more transformative, something cheaper than a very long holiday. Part of the logic of holidays depends on it being a limited period of time. You can splurge on a limited period of time. You can extend yourself and pack in as much as possible in a limited period of time. You can put off what is boring and routine – washing clothes, paying bills, school – for a limited period of time. At three weeks we’ve reached that kind of holiday limit. But if this were a holiday, we’d be keen to pack in as much as possible in these final few days, we’d be buying mementos and gifts, we’d be wearing that pair of socks one more time, and redoubling our energy for a last jolly before shifting through the gears ...

Swastika, from the Sanskrit, literally means "there is good (health/prosperity/success/fortune)" - seen here on flats in Jaipur The swastika is everywhere: on pillars in homestays, the walls of hotels, tiles in houses, weddings: it’s omnipresent. I first saw earnestly drawn swastikas in Germany where the British had taken over NAZI military sites. Most eerie was Church House, the British Army Chaplaincy centre in Lubbecke. Formerly it was the home of Hitler Youth; the thought that children had scratched out this symbol of death is terrifying. But, even here, I find it shocking. I know India had it first (and even Gandhi advocated armed resistance in World War 2), but the symbol has become too much a symbol of evil, of torture and murder, of racism and genocide, of all that is worst in humanity. Ideologically, it’s a reminder of the foreclosure of the hope that our horizon is enlightened liberation rather than a dark horizon of a new mythology. Steven Pinker may be trying to r...

“Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It’s nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that.” One of the most memorable openings of a novel. Even the first three words instantly form a picture in your mind. The picture, it’s worth remembering, is probably very different depending on the cities of your experience. Currently sat in a blue city, which I have warmed to (after the worst possible start); this evening, when my house was all stilled – the babies lulled to sleep by the deeply poetic rhythms of Kipling’s Jungle Book (reading it to children is a great pleasure, the sounds of the words themselves generate the tone and timbre of the story), the book of which has fulfilled the Disney film in its first twelve pages – I took to the streets of Jodhpur, which away from the market is elegant with beautiful buildings rising up from the trash, lame dogs and sweet-smoky street-fires, nestled into the warm lights of the fort above, with a glorious...

Jaisalmer fort. We're having dinner with a great view in the bottom right corner. The first week of travelling is dominated by inconvenience. You have to get used to that prelapsarian world where you didn’t have a phone because yours doesn’t work, or, if it does, you know it’s costing you like £12 a day. In a similarly nostalgic moment you return to cash as there’s no guarantee anywhere will take card payment (in India they don’t) and having discarded your wallet in 2007 you have to find somewhere to stuff cash with monopoly numbers on it. Washing clothes in hotels is expensive so you start wearing everything for days. And you can never find anything because as you approach middle-age you’ve learned that the only way to find things is to keep putting them back in the same place, but when you’re constantly moving that is impossible.  The first week of travelling is also strewn with moments of culture-shock. Remembering to clean your teeth without water, looking both ways before cros...

Apollo gave the desert 100 out of 5, asserting the morning we woke up under the stars on cold sand that he wanted to stay another day. His parents were greatly relieved, being on tenterhooks for any sign from the children that they have had enough of India. (Pancakes for breakfast each morning is really helping.) Currently Apollo’s favourite thing in the world is “camels”. Our great thanks go to Ratiya and especially Papaya for stealing his heart.  The desert is a magical place – no doubt why it plays such an important role in all religions – especially these ascetic Indian religions – but no less in Christianity. The story of the Patriarchs largely takes place in the wilderness, as well as key moments in the lives of the prophets. The earliest Gospel begins with John the Baptist in the desert and it emerges frequently in all Gospels as a refuge, place of teaching and encounter.  Even for the tourist, the desert offers something – especially stepping away from the noise and re...

Sunrise on the Golden City We’re currently running the kaleidoscope of Indian tourism. Our first day out in India was to the Red fort in Delhi. After leaving Agra, we went on to the pink city – Jaipur. This morning we arrived in the Golden City Jaisalmer. Our next port of calls ends the rainbow in the blue city of Jodhpur. (Apologies for the confused metaphor, we had originally intended to travel to Jodhpur first leaving the golden city till last but that would have meant a very long journey from Jaisalmer in the far West to Ranthambore and the jungle South of Delhi.  We got to Jaisalmer by overnight train but were badly prepared. The city lies in the desert. Tomorrow we are heading out to see the stars on a camel, and at night it gets pretty cold. Our train arrived at 5:40am by which time Oberon had never been cuddled so hard as we clung desperately to each other for warm. (Actually, weirdly, it was only the adults who felt perishingly cold – the children slept like little angels,...

looking down from a bunk in a sleeper train carriage Our second Indian train to Jaipur was only one hour late leaving and arriving. I’m wrestling with how distasteful I found the enforced constant suspicion required in Delhi and Agra. There are good and logical reasons for not trusting anyone who offers help as we discovered time and again, but expecting the worst in people doesn’t come naturally to me. I was very much influenced by reading Martin Buber in my twenties and continue to try to never approach anyone as an ‘it’ to be negotiated with or brushed aside. Our trip so far makes that difficult. Having people try to exploit you is wearying. Having people overrun the reasonable wishes of your children to not be continually photographed for their exoticism is upsetting. And, from the other side, the scale of poverty, as in many parts of the world, is hard to engage with personally. There’s a lot that makes you want to withdraw from personal interaction. And yet the trains are also lo...